[This has been an exceptionally depressing two weeks in political news. Somewhat edited for clarity.]
This is an attempt to organize at a very high level what we have learned about covid in the past three years. It is much more for myself than any broader audience, and is not a completely or extensively footnoted article; if I were going to provide cites for what is now largely common knowledge it would have to be a much longer and more extensively researched piece. I have generally stuck with moderate sources and information, attempting to avoid both denial and unreasonable fear.
The disease is real and the reality is enough.
Where sources conflict, for instance studies of the risk and incidence of long covid, I have attempted to chose plausible median data. This reflects both skepticism of extremes and of over-precision; many people demand precise numbers, and on these matters precise numbers are difficult to come by.
Once I post an article, I usually leave it standing with only minor changes, but in the case of this article I will correct errors as they are reported to me.
You don’t remember it (it was passing away in my youth) but there was a time when gynecological information was kept from women. It is for that reason that Our Bodies, Ourselves was published, and was a radical act in its time. Such material was banned as obscene in the past, and will be again, if the misogynists have their way. These bans, regardless of how well-intended, are invariably enforced over-broadly, and Spoutible will be pressured to do so. There is a huge, mean-spirited, well-funded, and largely successful movement that is working to that goal.
I recently had an extended Twitter discussion with an antivax lawyer, and he pointed out that he knew a lot of people who had had covid who didn’t have long covid symptoms. This isn’t likely. He probably assumed this was so because those people didn’t talk about it, and didn’t have big, obvious disabilities.
One gets a different picture of covid from reading the medical literature than from casual conversation with people who have had the disease or most of the major media sources. The people he knew may not have talked about long covid symptoms, or recognized them. Many doctors, even, don’t.
Another airborne disease, tuberculosis, was suppressed during the 20th century. Could we do the same with covid?
A distant family member died of covid today. Utterly unnecessary. And I realized: we beat tuberculosis, another airborne disease, which used to kill 1 in 7. We can beat covid. Why aren't we trying?
